You have to play 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' if you own a PS4

The mechanical T-Rex charges across the desert landscape as I pepper it with a hailstorm of seemingly ineffectual fire arrows. Human-sized pieces of machinery litter the dusty plateau where our deadly dance has played out, but even after all the damage I've inflicted... the great beast hasn't slowed.

It's almost finished, though. I can see it. There's only a sliver of health bar left. I just need to steer clear of its massive body — the only weapon it has left, but also the most potent — while burning fires finish the job.

I start to let myself relax; all that's left to do is dodge and wait, after all. But what a mistake that is. Our loud battle drew the attention of nearby wildlife, a fact I don't realize until a Broadhead — imagine an angry, horned cow made of metal — charges in and headbutts Aloy, my avatar, into a bloody pulp.

Game over. I sigh and reload. The world of Horizon: Zero Dawn is many things, but chief among those: it is unpredictable.

This is a game of moments. The kind, like the above Thunderjaw anecdote — a thing that really did happen during my 32-hour journey — that are unique to your experience and, as such, stick with you. Plenty of open world games describe themselves as a "sandbox," but Horizon forces you to get dirty.

The game world is dense with mechanical, dinosaur-like creatures, to the point that their hunting and grazing grounds often overlap. It doesn't matter how many skills or weapons Aloy has amassed; the dinos always pose a threat. Horizon is just as much a stealth game as it is an action game, with the two often blending together in surprising ways.

Of course, it's Aloy's tools that make combat such a joy. Each mechanized beast behaves differently, forcing you to lean on the full breadth of primitive weapons on offer. Different kinds of bows and slings bring their own benefits, and figuring out which ones work best with which robot dino is one of the most satisfying puzzles Horizon provides.

The human foes you face aren't nearly as complicated — shoot them in the head with arrows, basically — but they're also not nearly as numerous. You fight an increasing number as the story develops, but even then, the world — awash as it is with mechanized threats — can still swoop in to crush you (or your opponents) beneath a massive robodino claw.

In the years since it was first revealed at E3 2015, Guerrilla Games' sprawling RPG has primarily been described as "the robot dinosaur game." That is true: the highlight of Horizon's world is an elaborate ecosystem of dino-like automatons. But that's also a reductive description.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a multi-faceted success. The world is as lively as you'd hope, but the story behind that world is equally engrossing. The Earth that Aloy understands is a distant future version of our own, after civilization has fallen and been reclaimed by nature, then civilized once again.

The new human race is in the midst of forging its own sort of post-pre-history when we meet Aloy. The "dinosaurs" that inhabit the land are remnants of Earth's forgotten past. The truth of how this all fits together is, in fact, the story's central mystery.

The people of Horizon have largely embraced a tribal culture. Aloy was raised in the midst of the Nora, a low-tech society of hunter-gatherers who have deified a remnant of the "Old Ones" — that is, us — discovered in the bowels of a mountain at the heart of their homeland.

There are others as well, such as the sun-worshipping Carja or the Oseram tinkerers. Each culture is shaped by its connection to the world — both the one that Aloy knows and the one that came before.

Image: Guerrilla Games

While Aloy is technically of the Nora, she was raised as an outcast. These exiles live outside the main settlement as persona non grata; they are not allowed to interact with members of the tribe or with each other, and the tribe is supposed to ignore them in kind.

As we learn at the game's outset, Aloy is a special case. The circumstances of her birth are part of the larger mystery, but whatever happened, it was enough to land her — as an infant — in the care of another outcast.

The game's opening hours smartly chronicle Aloy's adolescent years, allowing players to discover the world at the same pace that she does. As an outcast, she learns about Nora culture from an outsider's perspective — and in the process develops a healthy skepticism toward her people's dogmatic approach to life.

That skepticism serves Aloy well as she ventures beyond tribal boundaries on a quest to save her people from a mysterious threat. With no dogma to influence her choices, she's able to greet the various other cultures of the world with curiosity rather than suspicion.

There is smart writing in Horizon at every level. From the way Aloy's character is constructed in the opening hours to the stories springing out of her interactions with other characters to the larger mysteries you work to uncover, it's easy to be swept up in this fiction.

If your growing relationship with Aloy marks the front half of Horizon, it's the central mystery that guides the back half. It almost reaches a point of information overload as you work through the final main quests — many of which devote large chunks of time to exposition — but sharp writing keeps you on the hook.

The story of how this world came to be is a fascinating tale that cleverly echoes some our present-day fears while forging its own path. As key actors and events are revealed and a clearer picture forms, it's hard to shake the desire to dive deeper.

Image: Guerrilla Games

The lore provides. Like many other open world RPGs of its ilk, Horizon is awash with texts and recordings that paint a more detailed picture of the past and how it informed Aloy's present. You're never forced to do more than understand the major beats, but the rest is out there for your perusal.

There's almost too much of it at times. The info dumps characterizing later story quests are complemented by mountains of audio recordings and walls of text, all of it optional. Horizon never overplays its hand in the early hours, but that can kill the momentum later on if you're trying to absorb everything in the spaces between each bombshell revelation.

That sense of overload also applies to inventory management. Over the course of Aloy's journey, you pick up all manner of dino debris and artifacts. These feed an elaborate crafting system that governs your ammo and carry capacity (there are lots of similarities here with recent Far Cry games).

While the game indicates what each item is used for — whether it's for crafting, trading, or just outright selling — so much falls into the "you should save this" category that resource-hunting players will find themselves constantly pushing up against the limits of a backpack that feels too small. And with no way to sort your inventory, managing the overflow feels unwieldy.

Don't misread here: these are small complaints. Minuscule, even, against the backdrop of Guerrilla's larger accomplishment. Horizon: Zero Dawn is a special game, roping together the perfect mixture of a sharp story, an astonishingly detailed world, and "holy crap did I really just do that?!" action.

This is a game where, a full 32 hours after starting, with all the key mysteries uncovered... I still felt like I'd only scratched the surface. That's a rare thing in video games. But that's Horizon: Zero Dawn. Go play it.

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